Boy discovers million year old fossil by falling on it!

Posted by: admin , July 20, 2017

10-year-old boy discovered the million-year-old fossil of a prehistoric creature when he literally fell on it while hiking with his parents in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
Jude Sparks says he was running when he tripped on part of a tusk belonging to the Stegomastodon, which is from the Pleistocene era and believed to be an ancestor to the modern-day elephant.
The creature is not a dinosaur, with the T-Rex, Triceratops and Velociraptors living in the Mesozoic era, which ended 66 million years ago.
Jude’s parents contacted Peter Houde, a professor at New Mexico State University (as he had discovered a similar fossil near the campus), however it took several months to commence excavations, as the fossil was found on private land and permission was required from the landowner.
The exact site of the discovery has remained confidential.
As the bones were “deceptively delicate”, chemical hardeners were applied to keep them intact during the excavation process.
Once the fossil was removed, it was coated in plaster and transported to its current home, the New Mexico State University’s Vertebrate Museum.
This boy will have a hell of a story to tell his friends!